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Belleville's marina operations are a sinking ship financially and Mayor Neil Ellis wants to either keep them afloat or bail out of the business.

Ellis argued during Monday's council meeting a proposed plan by staff to increase rates at the city's 300 boat slips isn't enough to take the marina operations to a cost-recovery scenario. The suggested rates presented at Monday's council meeting would see seasonal boaters at Meyers Pier paying $54 per foot and Victoria Harbour boaters paying $51 per foot by 2015. The rate increases would be incremental yearly until 2015. Current rates are $42 per foot at Meyers and Victoria Harbour rates at $39 per foot.

But those suggested and current rates mean taxpayers are subsidizing the marina operations, said the mayor.

“Last year, in marina operations, I believe we lost $54,000 in operational losses,” Ellis said. “If you take the capital and take a figure like $5 million that we've put in the marina over the last six years, we're subsidizing them $1,000 to $1,300 per dock.”

Coun. Tom Lafferty had a different view noting charging boaters more will only drive the business away. He said it makes no sense to increase rates when the boaters are guaranteed customers.

“Penalizing the seasonal boaters just doesn't make sense,” he said.

The city's director of recreation, culture and community services, Mark Fluhrer, said the rates being proposed are in line with other municipalities. Fluhrer told council there will be savings seen as the city is no longer paying lease fees to the federal government, thanks to the divestiture of the lands.

“We're presenting these as an option to you,” Fluhrer said. “We were asked to look carefully at the operation.”

The mayor, however, said there is no need for taxpayers to be subsidizing the operation.

“If you have enough disposable income to own a boat and you can have it sit down there, I don't want my tax dollars subsidizing it,” said Ellis.

The fees should be changed to make the operation cost-recovery immediately, the mayor stressed.

Lafferty argued the city subsidizes many services and operations and that's part of governance.

“That's what a community does. We help each other,” he argued.

The initial rate increase failed to find support from council — only Couns. Jack Miller, Egerton Boyce and Pat Culhane supported it — and a second motion from Ellis to have staff return with a proposal to get the operation at a cost-recovery model this year didn't make it to the voting stage as council opted to table the matter for staff to conduct further investigation.

After the meeting, however, Ellis continued to argue the marinas need to be overhauled.

“We do subsidize things in the community such as our arenas and other things that make our community better that private business won't go into because there's no money to be made... There's private marinas that run, obviously, at a profit and we need to look at that and if we can't get there we should get out of the marina business,” he told media.

With council making no decision on rates, the current boating rates remain in place.